The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public records show a registered, tax-exempt organization in good standing.
What it says it does
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART COLLECTS, STUDIES, CONSERVES, AND PRESENTS SIGNIFICANT WORKS OF ART ACROSS ALL TIMES AND CULTURES IN ORDER TO CONNECT PEOPLE TO CREATIVITY, KNOWLEDGE, AND IDEAS.
- Income
- $907.4 million
- Spending
- $502.0 million
- Spent on programs
- 57%
- Reserves
- 29.1 months of spending
- Largest source of income
- investment income, 57%
- Employees
- 2,235
- Volunteers
- 1,355
- Highest pay
- $2.2 million, svp & chief investment officer
Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Financial health
Strong: 93 out of 100. Higher than 64% of charities in its peer group (arts and culture, over $100m).
Reserves
35 of 35Spendable reserves would cover 29.1 months of spending.
Debt
20 of 20It owes 10% of what it owns.
Living within its means
15 of 15Income exceeded spending by 45% of income.
Income trend
15 of 15Income rose 30% on the year before.
Spending floor
8 of 1557% of spending went to programs and raising each dollar of donations cost 7 cents.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Governance
Strong: 100 out of 100. Higher than 30% of charities in its peer group (arts and culture, over $100m).
Independent board
25 of 2549 of 50 voting board members are independent.
Conflict of interest policy
15 of 15Has a written conflict of interest policy.
Whistleblower policy
8 of 8Has a written whistleblower policy.
Record keeping policy
7 of 7Has a written policy on keeping and destroying records.
Board minutes
5 of 5Keeps minutes of board meetings.
Board sees the tax return
10 of 10Gave the board a copy of this return before filing it.
Pay set independently
5 of 5Sets its chief executive's pay through independent review and comparison.
Independent check of accounts
15 of 15Its accounts were audited by an independent accountant.
No reported misuse
10 of 10Reports no diversion of assets, excess benefits or loans to insiders.
Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Impact evidence
Describes programs. Its tax return describes what it does but we have found no measurable results in it.
Programs described in its return (10)
- $163.4 million spent. CURATORIAL DEPARTMENTS, INCLUDING OPERATION OF THE CLOISTERS, CONSERVATION, CATALOGUING, AND SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS (INCLUDES FELLOWSHIP AWARDS AND TRAVEL STIPENDS IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,322,708)
- $47.0 million spent. ACQUISITIONS AND SALES OF ART
- $31.7 million spent. EDUCATION PROGRAMS, MUSEUM LIBRARIES, CONCERTS & LECTURES, AND DIGITAL MEDIA
- $19.9 million spent. OPERATING SERVICES
- $20.2 million spent. SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS
- $5.8 million spent. ALL OTHER SUPPORT SERVICES
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded on April 13, 1870, with a statement of purpose that has guided it for over 150 years: "to be located in the City of New York, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said city a Museum and library of art, of encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts, and the application of arts to manufacture and practical life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and, to that end, of furnishing popular instruction." The Met is devoted to a universal collection of art in the service of the public. During the 2022 strategic-planning process, the need for an updated, more inclusive and welcoming mission statement with a more tightly articulated expression of that purpose became apparent. To that end, on May 10, 2022, the Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art reaffirmed the above statement of purpose and supplemented it with the following statement of mission: "The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across time and cultures in order to connect all people to creativity, knowledge, ideas, and one another." In this context, we recognize that our position as one of just a few universal art museums brings both renown and great responsibilities, especially in a period when the public looks to us for meaning and inspiration. Our achievements in fiscal year 2025 underscored not only our commitment to fulfilling these responsibilities but to doing so in an exemplary and visionary way, as a leading global arts institution like The Met must. In fiscal year 2025, The Met welcomed 5.7 million visitors, 5 percent more than last year, a testament to the excellence and attraction of our programming across all of our spaces. We also made significant progress in a number of capital projects that will reshape the Museum for generations to come, as The Met's two-million-square-foot Fifth Avenue location stands at the threshold of an essential transformation. With the opening in May of the new Michael C. Rockefeller Wing for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania, the Museum experience has been totally reimagined, and the forward-thinking trend will continue in coming years with the opening of the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, The Met's new space for international modern and contemporary art, in 2030; a new special exhibition gallery in the Great Hall in 2026, with a new 83rd Street entrance and reimagined spaces for dining and retail in a later phase; and new Galleries for the Art of Ancient West Asia and the Art of Ancient Cyprus in 2027. These superb new spaces will highlight the collection and tell new stories through art, while improving visitor experience, infrastructure, and sustainability. ON-SITE ATTENDANCE With over 5.7 million visitors to its two locations-The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters-in fiscal year 2025, the Museum's overall attendance grew by 5 percent compared to last year, and for the second consecutive year, local visitorship (New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey residents) exceeded pre-pandemic figures-a 109 percent recovery compared to 2019. Local attendance made up 62 percent of all visitors in fiscal year 2025, while domestic out-of-state visitors accounted for 23 percent. The Museum also tracked its highest single-day attendance since 2017 on opening day of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, May 31, 2025, when 33,700 visitors came to The Met. The Thomas J. Watson Library saw 9,903 visits by outside researchers in fiscal year 2025 and welcomed 2,764 new outside researchers. The Museum libraries circulated 66,907 items to readers and continued to digitize rare collection materials, both printed and manuscript, and to make them available online, averaging 190,819 hits per month. Deepening and strengthening relationships with local communities continues to be a core strategic goal for the Museum. The Government Affairs department meets this objective through a multipronged approach, including welcoming elected officials, community leaders, neighbors, local and outer-borough residents, and other individuals, many of whom may not traditionally have seen themselves reflected here. The department also offers unique opportunities to explore the galleries, meet curators, engage with art, and connect with staff and collections alike during Community Wednesdays (when the Museum is closed to the public), at after-hours events, and on days when the Museum is open late. The Government Affairs team also facilitates the Museum's role as a cooling center in the summer, a warm refuge in the winter, and a polling site for local residents for primary and general elections. These initiatives brought over 6,000 New Yorkers to the Museum in fiscal year 2025. Participating groups ranged from veterans, seniors, and teenagers to Special Olympics participants, migrant families, and elected officials, reaching audiences across all five boroughs of New York City and throughout Long Island. COLLECTION AND ACQUISITIONS The Met collection is the heart of the Museum, informing all of our programming. Its depth and diversity make it possible to tell the widest range of stories and engage ever more meaningfully with our audience. In fiscal year 2025, we made several notable additions to the collection, including: For the Department of Greek and Roman Art, we acquired a marble statue of Pan of outstanding quality that presents a rare composition and was made around the second century; for the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative, the Claudius Tazza, a gilded silver dish from 1587-99 that was likely crafted in Antwerp for a member of the Habsburg dynasty who asserted sovereignty by tracing their lineage back to imperial Rome; for the Department of European Paintings, one of only eight paintings by Ambrosius Bosschaert, the founding father of Dutch flower painting, that combine still life and landscape, Bouquet of Flowers, from 1620; for the Dep
- The Museum has long engaged with countries around the globe as part of its commitment to the shared stewardship of the world's cultural heritage, and in recent years has established a number of key international partnerships. These include agreements with India, Thailand, Nigeria, Korea, and the Republic of Italy. For example, this year, following collaborative research, The Met and The Hellenic Republic of Greece announced in February 2025 the return of a seventh-century BCE Bronze Head of a Griffin to Greece, which will be loaned back to The Met for an exhibition in 2026. This follows an already-in-progress landmark 50-year partnership that The Met and Greece have with the Greek government and the Museum of Cycladic Art regarding Leonard N. Stern's Collection of Cycladic art that brought 161 stunning Cycladic artifacts from the Leonard N. Stern Collection-which includes nearly all the major types of Cycladic marble figurines representing the Late Neolithic period to the end of the Early Bronze Age-to The Met for a long display and includes a series of cultural exchanges and opportunities. For example, in February of this year, as part of the Museum's Cultural Heritage Now convening series, we presented a panel discussion between The Met and Greece in "The Cyclades at The Met, a New Model of Collaboration," featuring Met curators and scientists, representatives from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, and others. As another example this fiscal year, in September 2024 the Museum announced a loan agreement whereby 14 ancient sculptures that a private collector in New Zealand voluntarily repatriated to the Republic of Yemen would be transferred to The Met. At the Museum, the works-from the Hague family collection-will be studied and catalogued until Yemen requests their return. The loan follows the historic custodial agreement established between The Met and Yemen in 2023, whereby The Met is now caring for and displaying two ancient stone works that the Museum had repatriated from its own collection after provenance research led by Met scholars established that the works rightfully belong to the Republic of Yemen. As part of a commitment to transparency, The Met has launched object webpages for all restituted works of art, specifying that the object has been returned and to what country. EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS In fiscal year 2025, the Museum's exhibitions team mounted 38 exhibitions and installations. Groundbreaking major commissions and fresh explorations of historically important artists shared the lineup with innovative and thematic presentations to make new connections in art across time periods, from ancient to modern. The following exhibitions were among the highlights in fiscal year 2025: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: Selections from the Collection; Mary Sully: Native Modern; Ink and Ivory: Indian Drawings and Photographs Selected with James Ivory; The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection; A Decade on Paper: Recent Acquisitions, 2014-2024; The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo; Mexican Prints at the Vanguard; Man-dalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet; Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin; Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph; Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350; Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans; Jesse Krimes: Corrections; Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now; Art Work: Artists Working at The Met; The Great Hall Commission: Tong Yang-Tze, Dialogue; Colorful Korea: The Lea R. Sneider Collection; Celebrating the Year of the Snake; Democratizing Prints: The JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz Gift; Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature; Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100-1900; Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie; The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910; The Roof Garden Commission: Jennie C. Jones, Ensemble; Sargent and Paris; Superfine: Tailoring Black Style; Defensive Display: Shields from The Met Collection; Lorna Simpson: Source Notes; City and Country: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints; Iba Ndiaye: Between Latitude and Longitude; and Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection. Irving Penn: Centennial traveled to A Corua, Spain (November 23, 2024-May 1, 2025) and From Impressionism to Early Modernism: French Masterpieces from the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art traveled to the National Palace Museum, Taipei (June 14-October 12, 2025). The Publications and Editorial Department produced 19 new titles and 6 reprints, displaying a remarkable breadth of topics and formats. Among these were the highly successful exhibition catalogues Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature, which went into a second printing, and Sargent and Paris, which went into three printings; the acclaimed Costume Institute publication, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style; along with such boundary-pushing exhibition catalogues as Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now; Lorna Simpson: Source Notes; Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie; and Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph. Other notable publications include How to Read African Textiles, published to coincide with the opening of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, and The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, as well as two volumes published simultaneously in both English and Spanish: the monograph Suspended Moment: The Architecture of Frida Escobedo and the Bulletin Mexican Prints at the Vanguard. Exemplifying the critical acclaim garnered by our books, the catalogue Juan de Pareja won the prestigious Jonathan Brown Award and The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism was shortlisted for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, while Hidden Faces, Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet, and Sargent and Paris were named "Best Book
- In offsite programs related to exhibitions, we hosted two exhibition preview conversations celebrating the Costume Institute's Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, at the Apollo Stages in Victoria Theater in Harlem and the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn. The Harlem conversation focused on the cultural and historic style legacy of the neighborhood and featured Harlemites Jonathan McCrory of the National Black Theatre, historian and fashion icon Lana Turner, and bandleader Dandy Wellington. It attracted 180 with over 100 people joining the livestream and 7,000 views of the recording. The Brooklyn conversation featured the exhibition design duos Ev Bravado and Tla D'Amore of Who Decides War, and Dynasty and Soull Ogun of L'Enchanteur. The Billie Holiday Theatre sold out with an audience of 200, with 100 people joining the livestream and over 3,000 views of the recording. The exhibition Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie inspired a partnership with Mott Street Girls for guided walking tours in Chinatown-visiting murals on Doyers Street and a multigenerational family-owned porcelain shop from the 1890s run by the fifth-generation owner, a former Met Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence, Mei Lum. Both tours sold out, with 60 people participating. This year's large-scale Museum-wide festivals included our annual Met Fall Fest, Lunar New Year, and Museum Mile, drawing over 40,000 visitors of all ages for performances, art making, talks, and connection with over 25 community partners. On May 31, the Museum marked the reopening of the new Michael C. Rockefeller Wing with a day-long celebration that saw a record 33,000 visitors in a single day. Activities included live music, talks, artist demonstrations and drop-in art making, and film screenings, engaging scholars and artists from the three collection regions as well as the wing's architect Kulapat Yantrasast in conversation with Met leadership. The Museum again served as a cultural hub for young people. Our popular Teens Take The Met! engaged 3,285 teens this year in activities led by 62 cultural and community-based organizations and 15 internal department collaborators; the teen copyist program inspired 24 teens; and our regular Teen Fridays drew 690 New York City teens in a laboratory for creative and social exploration. The Your Met Art Box program, designed to reduce isolation and foster wellness among New York City's elderly population, continues to expand. Presented in partnership with the New York City Department for the Aging, it grew by 44 percent, bringing monthly art-making activities and conversations to 104 older adult centers. The program engaged over 1,800 participants, several of whom subsequently visited the Museum for the first time, compliments of The Met. Our Discoveries workshops engage children and adults on the autism spectrum and their care-givers, and this year Education partnered with the Musical Instruments Galleries for live music listening opportunities in the gallery and the chance to create instruments in conjunction with the Jennie C. Jones Roof Garden Commission. As always, The Met remained an essential resource for teaching, training, and learning at all levels. This year, more than 184,945 K-12 teachers and students participated in 98 virtual and 37,053 in-person guided tours of The Met collection, and 147,794 in self-guided tours. In addition, more than 1,181 teachers and school leaders participated in programs focused on integrating art into the classroom and further strengthened multidisciplinary art learning to attract educators from a wider variety of disciplines. Advancing research and scholarship and supporting professional development is another priority of the Education Department. The reopening of the Rockefeller Wing galleries was an opportunity to welcome 14 university faculty and administrators for a behind-the-scenes tour of the galleries while under construction and serve as a resource for university faculty as both scholars and educators. This fiscal year, we hosted 113 high school interns and 97 undergraduate and graduate interns for paid internships in over 20 departments, providing training, networking, and community building opportunities. We also hosted 21 high school scholars from 20 different New York City Housing Authority developments from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx for a 40-hour internship as part of The Met NYCHA Art and Culture Scholars leadership development program. We also continued to strengthen our commitment to research in support of our fellowship program, hosting 38 international fellows-scholars, conservators, and scientists-from 11 different countries in 22 departments. This year's annual series Research Out Loud: Met Fellows Present drew over 1,600 visitors online and in person. We also awarded nine travel grants to Met staff for research and professional development related to their work. Exhibitions are also crucial laboratories for innovative interpretive projects. Advance audience research for Sargent and Paris led us to create an analog interactive inspired by the Paris Salon of 1884. Visitors were invited to reflect, sketch, or critique their experience in the exhibition and leave it for others to see. The interactive inspired 10,000+ responses. In conjunction with Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet, a class of 15 students explored mindfulness and connections between art and Buddhist devotional images in a uniquely Met program that also included a study of brain activity during moments of calm. A week-long Teen Studio fashion design intensive drew 17 high school students to create designs inspired by Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, culminating with a fashion show in which the designers walked the runway in their ensembles. And 45 K-12 educators explored Mexican Prints at the Vanguard, focusing on works and themes and making prints with an artist from the organization New Latin Wave in anticipation of devel
- LIVE ARTS The Museum's Department of Live Arts presented a total of 84 performances in fiscal year 2025-83 percent of which were offered free with Museum admission-and reached a total audience of nearly 8,000 visitors. Among the highlights in this year's MetLiveArts season were several major projects that showcased the Museum's collection and iconic spaces. In a first for The Met, live performance was featured as an integral part of a major exhibition in the form of a dedicated gallery called the Performance Pyramid within the exhibition Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now. In the space, 11 live performance events featured artists in the genres of music, theater, dance, and performance art, resulting in a documentary history of Black performance art incorporating ancient Egyptian themes. At The Met Cloisters, Live Arts commissioned and presented two large-scale, site-specific works: Primero Sueo, a new processional opera by Paola Prestini and Magos Herrera based on the writings of the medieval Mexican nun Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz; and Forest of Metal Objects,a site-specific percussion piece by Michael Gordon that took advantage of The Met Cloisters' unique acoustical properties, combining them with theatrical and choreographic staging by Paul Lazar and Annie B. Parson. The Met Cloisters was also the site of a three-night marathon performance of eminent composer Philip Glass's complete string quartets, performed by the acclaimed ensemble Brooklyn Rider, and Glass himself attended the first night of the cycle. DIGITAL The Museum's website ended fiscal year 2025 with 29 million users, of which 35 percent were international. The most visited sections of the website were The Met Collection, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, exhibition information, and ticketing. The Digital Department focused on enhancing the user experience across these key areas, introducing new features and design improvements tailored to diverse audiences. Highlights included citation buttons on Timeline essays to support students and more scannable layouts on exhibition pages to aid visit planners. In support of the reopening of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the Digital Department launched an impressive slate of interpretive content that had been in the making for several years. In video, the team published 16 videos that were directed by filmmaker Sosena Solomon and co-produced with the World Monuments Fund about vital conservation and preservation work across Africa; three animated maps that visualize the complex and interconnected histories of migration and trade in Africa, Oceania, and the ancient Americas; three videos that provide virtual tours of objects in the collection; and a host of artist profile and archival videos. The team also produced a suite of articles and essays to coincide with the reopening, three video tours of the galleries, and three audio guides, including a Spanish-language version for the Arts of the Ancient Americas. The second season of The Met's narrative nonfiction podcast Immaterial featured eight new episodes highlighting important works from The Met collection and experts from diverse backgrounds. Since the launch of Immaterial in 2022, it has accumulated more than 310,000 downloads resulting in more than 3 million minutes of total listening time by roughly 37,000 unique listeners. The department's video production teams continued to produce engaging stories in popular formats, such as artist interviews, exhibition tours, and stories about conservation. We also launched new video initiatives this year-YouTube Shorts and YouTube Podcasts-that contributed to an overall gain of 52,000 subscribers and 29 million minutes of engagement time. Again this year, the Digital Department commissioned prominent authors to write personal essays reflecting on The Met collection and published pieces from a number of authors. The team also produced and published videos featuring renowned novelist Amor Towles, Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk, and famed designer Todd Oldham. The Digital Department supports special exhibitions with a wide range of content. In fiscal year 2025, the team produced audio guides for Siena: The Rise of Painting (1300-1350); Caspar David Friedrich: The Voice of Nature Within; Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie; The New Art: American Photography 1839-1910; and Sargent and Paris. The audio guides were made available for free on the website's exhibition and audio guide pages, contributing to over 114,000 total listeners on the website. The team also produced audio guides for The American Wing at 100 reinstallation as well as the Leonard N. Stern Collection of Cycladic Art. The Museum's social media reach is broad: its Instagram has more than 4.5 million followers, X (formerly Twitter) has more than 4.1 million followers, Facebook has more than 2.3 million followers, LinkedIn has more than 430,000 followers, and TikTok reached more than 1.2 million followers. This year the Museum expanded its digital reach by redoubling efforts on Chinese-language social media platforms Weibo and WeChat, garnering 66,500 and 27,500 followers, respectively. CAPITAL PROJECTS In fiscal year 2025 the Museum's Capital Projects Department saw major milestones in a number of transformative projects that constitute the most ambitious change to The Met campus since the completion of the Roche Dinkeloo masterplan in the 1990s. Nearly a quarter of the Museum's spaces is in the process of being transformed. The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing was completed and opened to the public in May 2025. The project transforms how the Museum presents its collections of the art of sub-Saharan Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania, and also consisted of major upgrades to the building's infrastructure, including the construction of a new sloped glass wall on the south side of the Museum. Construction began in 2021, and the project was overseen by the design architect K
Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate
Legitimacy checks
Is it registered with the IRS? Passed.
Listed in the IRS master file of tax-exempt organizations as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Has the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status? Passed.
Not on the IRS automatic revocation list.
Source: Automatic revocation of exemption list, Internal Revenue Service, file dated November 6, 2026.
Are donations tax-deductible? Passed.
On the IRS list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.
Source: Publication 78 data: organizations eligible for tax-deductible contributions, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it keeping up with its IRS filings? Passed.
Most recent return on file covers the year ending June 2025.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
How long has it been tax-exempt? Passed.
Recognized by the IRS since March 1994.
Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.
Is it in good standing with state regulators? Passed.
Not on California's list of charities barred from soliciting. Other states are not yet checked.
Source: May Not Operate or Solicit for Charitable Purposes list, California Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, file dated November 4, 2026.
Ratings and checks are our reading of public records, using the published method. They are not a statement about anyone's honesty. If you work for this organization, you can send corrections or results, confirm you want gifts through Veridonate, or ask to be removed from giving.